Central Cal's Beemer Bash in Quincy, CA

Central Cal BMW had their annual Beemer BASH in Quincy, CA this year after having it in Mariposa last year and Paso Robles last year.

I took a ride up on friday and arrived after dark. I was looking all over town for the rally site and finally spotted two bikes in the Safeway parking lot. It was Ricardo on his Gollum bike and another AdvRider (I forgot your name, I'm a bad, bad man). FYI, Ricardo is sporting an HID setup on that thing these days. Wow.

Anyway, I got set up and woke up to this the next morning.

Across the way was the World's Cleanest R80 G/S

After it warmed up a bit (man, it was chilly that night!) I took a ride into town and found a bunch of bikes parked in front of the Morning Thunder Cafe. I highly recommend the avocado and bacon omelette. Coffee was good too.

I went out for a ride and took the back way down to Oroville.

I wandered around the rally for a while, looking at bikes and vendors and stuff and hung out with Ricky Kuhn for a while. He makes pretty neat stuff. I think his bar backs are yummy.

When I got back to the tent, some dude was playing a guitar nearby. It was Duner. I think the dude he's sitting with is named Jerry Smith. He owns the G/S. Duner wants the G/S but was unable to make a deal where Jerry got his guitar back and Duner got the G/S. I'm kidding!

Duner played guitar for a while, which was kind of like how I deal with cats I find when I'm out for a walk. You have to pick them up, rub their neck and see if any pleasant sounds come out. Anyway, I took some pictures of the general site.

We wandered over to rally headquarters and this nice woman was giving a demonstration of how to pick your bike up by yourself. It was Greg Hutchinson's kilowatt generating airhead as the "fallen victim". I don't know if she ever got it picked up. I think she had the grip wrong and she was struggling pretty mightily.

Here she is, working hard:

And here's Skert Youroski picking up my K75C in Greenfield a couple years ago. (Photo by Steve Anderson, thanks Steve!)

The grip on the lower bar gives more leverage so you have both hands helping lift. See how the grips differ?

Anyway, we wandered back toward camp and found Don Kemp. Both of these guys are members of the Village Idiots. Idiots like good and civilized before dinner libations, so we had martinis. Don had Boodles and vermouth and I had a shaker.

We hung around, shot the breeze, had dinner and ice cream. After a while, we all wandered off to bed, most of the rest of the Idiots going back to the Ranchito Motel. It was warm over there, I bet.

Next morning, I headed out and ran into Ricardo and The Guy Who's Name I've Forgotten (sorry, you're wicked nice). They were looking for Laporte Road to go to Oroville. As I was stopped with them, John Arnold rode by on his Not The World's Cleanest G/S. I followed him down to, where else, the Morning Thunder Cafe, where the rest of the Idiots were having breakfast.

In this picture, we have Kami, John Arnold, Jeff Mann and Roozbeh Chubak. John's asking Jeff if his riding suit makes his butt look big.

After breakfast, we all split up, with Jeff and I heading back to Marin together. It was hot, with temps in the high 90s and low 100s, in the Central Valley.

Route 70 goes up to Quincy from Oroville and there are a series of bridges under construction. They're all one lane now, so you regularly have to wait for traffic to clear and get either flagged across or the traffic control to switch.

Apparently, someone had a little trouble with the control and there was a head on at the very first bridge out of Oroville. Traffic was all backed up and I was getting ready to turn around go back up Oroville - Quincy highway. A guy rode up from the bridge and told us the CHP were letting bikes across.

We rode down and sure enough, the CHP held us until the ambulance got off the bridge and then waved us through. One of the wrecked cars was still on the bridge, but we could make it by. We had 50 miles of Rt. 70 ahead of us with no cars on it. Smooth, twisty, finely paved roadway was all ours. I beat the big RS the whole way. It's definitely one of my most memorable rides.

Got kind of medium ripped with the Idiots, which was fun. But yeah, there was a large contingent of old guys going to bed at 9pm. And to top it off, some fucking asshole had to fire up his airhead at 6am.

Suffering from a nasty knee sprain due to foolishly mixing too many beers and a dirtbike several weeks ago meant no riding to the Bash for me. A buddy was itching to ride but could not find a sitter, so Uncle Bubba volunteered to drive the kids to Quincy.

We left coasters get to have more events because of the ledgendary Calif weather. As the Northern scooter bums are settling in for a winter, we get our reward for the 100+ degree summers. Although, in the San Juaquin Valley we do get nasty tule fog...now thats an adventure!

Looking forward to a nice 60-70 degree October and then the cold stuff. 40 to 50 degrees,brrrrr, almost makes me want to turn on my heated grips. Hee,hee.